Our Co-op

Flourishing together

Imagine a workplace with no bosses, where everyone has equal pay and an equal say.

Well here at Suma we’ve been doing things a bit differently for over 40 years. Not only in our mission to supply everything vegetarian and sustainable, but also in how we are run.

A co-operative of ordinary people built on integrity and equality, we’re a worker co-op, a business owned and run by the nearly 200 people who work here. We don’t have any bosses or shareholders. We, Suma’s employees, set the direction of the business. Everyone has an equal say in what we do. We all get paid the same wage, take responsibility and each do a range of jobs each week, from truck driving to cooking to accounts.

It means that when you meet someone who works at Suma, you’re meeting a co-owner who knows and cares about the business. Your driver might work in accounts and product development when she’s not out on the road, so she can give you the bigger picture.

As a co-op we are more than the sum of our parts. When we come together we create something amazing.

Suma is the largest equal pay worker co-op in Europe. But we’re part of a bigger movement for workplace democracy.
There are around 7,000 co-ops in the UK and 3 million worldwide. From fellow wholefood co-ops like Green City in Glasgow and new tech start-ups such as Co-Tech, to the Spanish worker owned giant, Mondragon.

They all work in different ways and do different things but have one thing in common: they are owned and run by the people most affected by what that organisation does.